In the Washington Times: NAACP “Leaving the most vulnerable defenseless”

Dr. John Lott has a new piece with David Clarke at the Washington Times.  The piece starts this way.

Democrats don’t seem to trust poor blacks with guns. It is something that we have seen since at least the end of the Civil War. Yet, it is poor blacks, who are the most likely victims of violent crime who would benefit the most from being able to defend themselves. Unfortunately, this month, the NAACP president Derrick Johnson came out for gun control laws that would leave the most vulnerable defenseless.

The NAACP has become one of the most irrelevant civil rights organizations ever since they abandoned their original mission of civil rights and became a wholly owned subsidiary of the Democratic Party. They now embrace a liberal ideology, including gun control, that is not in the best interest of black civil rights. Name the last piece of relevant civil rights improvements advanced by this organization since Brown v. Board of Education school desegregation case.

As a former sheriff for Milwaukee and a researcher, we know that police are extremely important in stopping crime, but the police themselves understand that they almost always arrive at the crime scene after the crime has occurred. Black communities know all too well the epidemic of gang violence and murder, with blacks accounting for 13 percent of the population but 52 percent of the murder victims.

The people who are the most likely victims of crime are the very ones who benefit the most from being able to defend themselves. While gun control may stop some criminals from getting guns, it is the most law-abiding who obey the law and are disarmed. Taking guns away from drug gangs is about as difficult as stopping them from getting illegal drugs to sell.

Mr. Johnson claims that Australia’s 1996-1997 gun buyback produced supposedly amazing benefits: “gun-related homicides and suicides dropped by 59 percent and 65 percent, respectively.”

If only reducing crime and suicides were so easy.

Australia’s buyback resulted in more than 1 million firearms being handed in and destroyed, reducing gun ownership from 3.2 to 2.2 million guns. But since then there has been a steady increase in the number of privately owned guns. Since 1997, guns ownership grew over 3 times faster than the population (from 2.5 to 5.8 million guns). . . .

The rest of the piece is available here.